Healing fiction is, as the name implies, a genre of fiction that feels healing. Originating in Japan and South Korea, healing fiction has become a global phenomenon. In some ways, it can feel very similar to cozy fiction: it’s gentle, character-driven, and tends to have a happy ending.

But healing fiction is its own distinct brand of storytelling. It’s quite common for it to be composed of interlinked chapters that read like short stories, and to include magical elements such as talking cats or locations that only exist at certain times of the month or year. Its focus on healing sets it apart from conventional magical realism (even though there can definitely be some strong overlap).

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The healing can happen on two levels: the characters find healing, and the narrative feels healing for readers. I find that the healing aspect is tied to the genre’s broadly philosophical bent, which lends it an introspective dimension. Part of the magic of healing fiction lies in its ability to grapple with some of life’s more serious challenges without becoming too heavy or dark.

Let me give you an example from the popular Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, which is perhaps the best-known Japanese healing fiction series (the 6th book, Before I Knew I Loved You, was released earlier this year). The premise of Before the Coffee Gets Cold is that there’s a coffee shop where sitting in a specific booth has the potential to allow visitors to travel back in time for a handful of minutes (although they have to follow some very idiosyncratic rules for it to work). Each chapter focuses on a different character who has come to the café for time-traveling purposes.

The larger philosophical question undergirding the entire series is essentially: If you could travel back in time for just a few minutes, who and when would you travel to and why? As you might imagine, there’s often unresolved business between the time traveler and the person they want to see, so each chapter also makes space for some sort of closure to happen. Hence, the “healing” element of healing fiction.

There are lots of amazing works of healing fiction to choose from, so here are some recent and forthcoming reads to put on your TBR.

New Healing Fiction Books

The Seoul Letter Shop by Baek Seungyeon, translated by Clare Richards

I love writing letters by hand, and this book really appeals to that tradition. The main character, Hyoyoung, winds up working in a stationery shop when her career ambitions fall through. Along with boutique letter-writing supplies, the shop offers an anonymous pen-pal program. The idea of people feeling at liberty to write about things they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to say out loud is intriguing, and the ways the letters inform Hyoyoung’s familial relationships add a resonant throughline to the plot.

Welcome to the Kokoro Cat Clinic by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda

This is the third book in the We’ll Prescribe You a Cat series, and it’s every bit as delightful as the first two books. The characters in the four chapters that make up this book are each struggling in their own way—whether it’s with social pressures, being a new parent, or something else. So the premise that they’re each prescribed a cat (yup, you read that right) to help them navigate their challenges is both fascinating and fun. Even though some of the chapters are very serious, the whimsical premise keeps it from becoming too heavy.

A Serving of Hope by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Hisashi Kashiwai’s Kamogawa Food Detectives series is delectable. Father-daughter duo Chef Nagare and Detective Koishi are food detectives. They operate a diner where customers can go to have a lost recipe recreated for them. I love the way Kashiwai explores the relationship between food and memory; it’s such a strong connection and is handled with lovely detail in these books. Because of the lost recipes, this book (more than some other works of healing fiction) deals with a lot of loss. Even still, the gentle nature of healing fiction makes for a really thoughtful read. The fourth book in the series, A Serving of Hope, is another strong installment in a series I hope continues to expand.

Find More Healing in the Pages of a Book

For more recommendations in this vein, peruse this list of healing fiction books. Moving away from healing fiction as a genre, there are some amazing reads on this list of books that can contribute to your own healing journey and this list of novels about grief and trauma.